Gulf Coast, 2016–part 2

From Gulf Shores, AL I headed back into Florida  I had 2 days between reservations so I stopped in Milton, FL at Avalon Landing RV park.  It wasn’t the greatest park as far as sites, but I really enjoyed my view.  My spot overlooked some water (bayou?) and it had a lot of pelicans, they were fun to watch – especially while divng for food.

I don’t know what the pelican below is doing, but I saw it several times.

I know pelicans have a throat pouch.  I am wondering if this pelican was rearranging the pouch?  or cleaning it??

I then headed to Topsail Hill Preserve State Park.  This is an expensive state park.  By the time all the fees and taxes are added on, it came to about $47 a night.  That is for a paved full hookup site with cable, so more amenities than most state parks, but too expensive.  I had planned on biking on the trail that runs from Topsail Hill for 20+ miles.  But it ended up being rather cold and windy, so I ended up only riding within the park.  But I still had a couple of 12 mile bike rides. 

My first view of the ocean and the beach taken from the boardwalk.  The ocean was about a mile walk or bike ride from my RV.   Most days the water was a beautiful blue. 

After a very windy night I found a lot of starfish on the beach.

This was the first time I had ever seen deer at the beach.  I have seem them close to the beach, especially in the campgrounds under trees but not on the dunes.   They seemed to enjoy the dunes.  A local told me that they sometimes make it down to the beach and the next day I saw  tracks!

Then I headed 12 miles down the road (well more like 15 or 16 because of a detour) to Grayton Beach State Park.  Again it was cold and windy many days and very few people on the beach.

You can see the people above are in coats, one with a hooded parka on!

Below is a picture taken one cold morning after an extremely windy day and night.  My footprints were the only ones on the beach.

The picture below was taken on an extremely windy day.  So windy that most people did not go to the beach because it felt you were being sandblasted.  I ended up putting the hood from my sweatshirt on and completely blocking my face with it except around my glasses.  I still ended up with sand in my nose and mouth and other places that I didn’t expect to find sand! And that was after only a minute or so on the beach.  

I love the sign that I saw at a couple of the Florida state park.

After Grayton I headed back to St. Andrews State park in Panama City (which I covered in part 1).  From there I made my way back into Georgia where my first stop was St. Mary’s at Crooked River State Park (Feb. 21).  I’ll blog about that later.